Dominaria Budget Magic Updates

It's release weekend for Dominaria, which means it's time to dig through the new set and update some of our old Budget Magic decks! One of the tricks to playing Magic on the cheap is that, rather than just buying inexpensive decks, you need to make those decks last as long as possible. So today, we'll be looking back over all of the Standard Budget Magic decks since the release of Ixalan and seeing what new Dominaria cards we can add to keep them as fresh and as competitive as possible for our new Standard format!

A couple of quick things before we get to the decks. First, since we're working with budget decks, our goal is to keep the upgrades as budget friendly as possible, so even though Karn, Scion of Urza or Lyra Dawnbringer would make a lot of decks better, they are simply too expensive for our purposes today. Second, while most of our decks have at least some upgrades, thanks to the tribal nature of Ixalan block, a few don't really get any help from Dominaria. While I listed these decks out at the end of the article in the "no updates" section, if a deck didn't have any clear and obvious upgrades, I simply didn't upgrade it. Changing things just for the sake of being able to say we updated doesn't sound like a very good plan, especially since Magic cards cost real money. Of course, just because a deck didn't get any upgrades doesn't mean it's unplayable. In fact, it's the opposite: you might as well keep playing it as is without spending additional cash! Finally, my focus as far as upgrades were concerned was the main deck, so take the sideboards with a grain of salt. Right now, there are a ton of different playable decks in Dominaria Standard as people try to figure out what's good. After a few weeks, when we see how the metagame develops, we'll be able to make more meaningful changes to the sideboard to fight the Dominaria Standard metagame. With these things in mind, let's get to the decks!

While Grixis Amulet doesn't get a complete overhaul—Torment of Hailfire and Cut // Ribbons are still the best finishers, and the rest of the deck is still primarily card draw and removal—it does get a couple of interesting Dominaria cards along with one big shift in theme. First, thanks to some new additions in the mana base (Sulfur Falls) and the spell suite (Cast Down), we can cut the energy sub-theme of the deck. The main reason to play energy cards in the first place was to power up Aether Hub and make the mana work, and now that we have three check lands, we simply don't need Aether Hub anymore, which allows us to cut the rest of the energy cards for more powerful options.

As for Precognition Field, it's mostly a speculative one-of. Since our deck is so overloaded with spells, it have about a 50/50 chance of our top card being a spell. Over the course of the game, this adds up to a lot of free value. Plus, with cards like Opt and the exile ability on Precognition Field itself, we can manipulate the top of our library to get rid of extra lands and other cards we don't need to find our game-winning combo pieces. While it's possible that it ends up being not good enough in practice, I'm planning on testing a copy because on paper, it seems like it could be quite powerful, especially in slower, more controlling matchups. Remember: as an an enchantment, Precognition Field is much harder to kill than an artifact, so if we can get it on the battlefield, there's a pretty good chance it will stick around and draw us a ton of cards.

All in all, these changes amount to a pretty meaningful upgrade for Grixis Amulet. The Mirari Conjecture especially is important, giving us a Primal Amulet that doesn't die to Abrade. If you're looking to sling some spells in Dominaria Standard, this is a solid place to start!

Mono-Green Monument might be the single deck that's improved most with the release of Dominaria, although it's actually just Mono-Green Stompy, since Rhonas's Monument no longer works in the deck, but more on this in a minute. As far as why Mono-Green Monument has improved so much, there are actually two primary reasons. First, it has some amazing new additions from Dominaria. Second, some cards that were a bit too expensive last time we played the deck are much cheaper now thanks to Challenger Deck reprintings.

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As for Dominaria, Mono-Green Monument / Stompy gets two massive new additions in Llanowar Elves and Llanowar Elves' best friend, Steel Leaf Champion. It's hard to overstate just how big having a one-mana ramp spell is for Mono-Green Monument / Stompy: curving a one-drop into a three-drop is just so much scarier than curving a two-drop like Servant of the Conduit into a four-drop. Plus, Steel Leaf Champion is the perfect card to ramp into. A 5/4 for three is huge. In the early game, it's mostly unblockable, and having four toughness means it dodges some common removal like Abrade and Lightning Strike. Playing Steel Leaf Champion on Turn 2 is a pretty good way to steal games against a lot of decks.

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The other big addition to the deck is Heart of Kiran, which is now super cheap thanks to being a four-of in the Mardu Vehicles Challenger Deck. Alongside Aethersphere Harvest and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, the vehicle gives Mono-Green Stompy two brand new lines of attack. First, we can simply fly over and kill our opponent with powerful and resilient (especially to sweepers) Vehicles (while also having a way to block powerful fliers from our opponent like Glorybringer and Rekindling Phoenix). Second, vehicles offer us a way of doubling up our power on the battlefield when crewed, which allows us to play Ghalta, Primal Hunger very early in the game. While a random 12/12 trample might not seem like much, it forces the opponent to have a very specific subset of removal (like Vraska's Contempt, Seal Away, or Cast Out) right away or get trampled out of the game in just a couple of turns.

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The combination of the new Dominaria cards and the Vehicle / Ghalta plan means that Mono-Green Monument is way better than it was in the past, to the point where it could actually end up as a solid tier two deck in Dominaria Standard. However, this power comes with a cost: we can't really play Rhonas's Monument anymore. The cost-reduction effect doesn't do anything with Llanowar Elves or Steel Leaf Champion, and our vehicles don't trigger the "when you cast a creature" part of the artifact. As such, it gets cut in the current build of the deck. As far as power level, this is fine, but it's a little bit sad to see the former best card in the deck go from great to unplayable with one set release.

Thanks to new additions from Dominaria, Golden Journey changes quite a bit. In fact, since it drops the namesake Golden Guardian altogether, it's more of a solid Journey to Eternity deck than anything else. The good news is that the Journey to Eternity plan got a lot better thanks to some of the one-drops from Dominaria.

The rest of the changes are relatively small. Torgaar, Famine Incarnate gives us another sacrifice outlet and is pretty sweet if we start looping it with Journey to Eternity in the late game, since we can continually set our life total back to 10 (or if our opponent is gaining life, set their life total down to 10). One Demonlord Belzenlok gives us another way to grind out value with the Journey to Eternity loop, and a 6/6 flier is a good way to close out games, while the mana and removal also get a bit of an upgrade thanks to Woodland Cemetery and Seal Away.

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All in all, you don't have to drop Golden Guardian. You could make even smaller upgrades to the mana and removal and basically play Golden Journey as it was before, but with the new additions to the deck, I'm not sure that Golden Guardian is worth the hassle. While it can be powerful in the right situation, it's also slow. Trading it for Llanowar Elves should make the deck significantly faster and hopefully more competitive. Another option is to keep a copy or two of Golden Guardian, just to make the name fit. But is it really right to name a deck after a one-of anyway?

Mono-Black Panharmonicon only gets three new cards from Dominaria, but thankfully they are good ones. Perhaps the most interesting addition is in the mana base, where we drop all of our non-Swamp lands (except for two Field of Ruins, which can turn into Swamps) so we can take advantage of Cabal Stronghold. While Cabal Stronghold is a difficult card to make work thanks to the basic land restriction, it's perfect for Mono-Black Panharmonicon for a couple of reasons. First, Mono-Black Panharmonicon is great at surviving until the late game thanks to endless removal, which means it's likely we'll actually survive until Turn 7 or 8, when Cabal Stronghold starts to produce tons of extra mana. Second, thanks to the combination of endless card draw and Panharmonicon, it's likely that we'll still have plenty of cards to play, even in the late game, which means we'll actually be able to put the extra mana to good use. While losing Scavenger Grounds (and to a lesser extent, Ifnir Deadlands) hurts a little, because of how Mono-Black Panharmonicon plays, it is likely worth the cost of warping our mana to make Cabal Stronghold good, and this doesn't even include our other new additions:

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The other reason I'm super excited for Cabal Stronghold in Mono-Black Panharmonicon is Josu Vess, Lich Knight. While getting 10 mana to kick it is rough for most decks, with the help of Cabal Stronghold, we shouldn't have a problem casting it by Turn 8. Then, even without a Panharmonicon on the battlefield, Josu Vess, Lich Knight is putting 20 power and toughness on the battlefield, and with a Panharmonicon or two, we just make tokens until our opponent scoops (or Magic Online breaks). Seriously though, Josu Vess, Lich Knight does shore up a weakness in Mono-Black Panharmonicon by giving us one card that is almost guaranteed to close out the game in just a turn or two. Past builds of Mono-Black Panharmonicon have been great at generating value and drawing cards, but when it comes time to actually kill the opponent, it's often 10 turns of beating down with a Ravenous Chupacabra or Gonti, Lord of Luxury. This problem ends with a couple of copies of Josu Vess in the deck.

Meanwhile, Demonlord Belzenlok is just another huge flier that draws us a card—and potentially tons of cards, in conjunction with Panharmonicon. With sixteen cards with converted mana costs of four or more in our deck a single Demonlord Belzenlok should draw us at least three cards (because odds are in favor of at least one of the two Demon triggers hitting an expensive card). Plus, unlike our other card-draw creatures, Demonlord Belzenlok is guaranteed to draw us at least one non-land card, so it's better than a random draw even if we only get one fresh card. All in all, Demonlord Belzenlok isn't a game-changer like Josu Vess, Lich Knight, but it's a great addition to the deck, doing basically everything that Mono-Black Panharmonicon could want from a six-drop.

WB Aristocrats actually gets a ton of sweet new cards from Dominaria. First off, we have some easy changes with our removal. Baffling End is fine, but it's almost strictly worse than Seal Away, and in our deck, Vicious Offering might be even better, since we actively want to sacrifice our creatures, and along with being a Dismember, Vicious Offering offers us a free instant-speed sacrifice outlet to avoid getting Elenda, the Dusk Rose exiled by Cast Out or Ixalan's Binding. However, the more exciting updates come in the form of two new finishers:

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Rite of Belzenlok was pretty much made for WB Aristocrats, giving us four useless tokens to sacrifice to make Treasure tokens with Pitiless Plunderer and to pump our Elenda, the Dusk Rose and then eventually giving us a huge flying Demon that can not only kill our opponent quickly by attacking but also allows us to sacrifice creatures! Meanwhile, Torgaar, Famine Incarnate is sort of our backup plan. We've got a ton of expendable two-drops that leave behind tokens when they die, so if we can play some combination of two Martyr of Dusks and Doomed Dissenters over the first three turns of the game, we're set up to cast Torgaar, Famine Incarnate on Turn 4, drain our opponent down to just 10 life, and hopefully close out the game in short order with our huge 7/6 attacker.

The main question for the deck is whether or not it actually needs a lot of our traditional combo pieces, like Marionette Master. It's possible that just playing more Rite of Belzenlok and Torgaars is even better than trying to convert our creatures into Treasure Tokens and then draining our opponent out of the game. For now, we keep the same basic shell as before, but as you play with the deck, keep in mind that a complete rebuild around the new Dominaria cards might be even better than an upgrade. Worst case, you build a Torgaar's Rite Aristocrat deck while also keeping the pieces for WB Aristocrats and end up with two slightly different but related decks for the price of one!

Sunbird's Bounty is a weird deck; it's hard for new cards to fit, since it's basically all ramp and card draw, with a combo kill. However, within these restrictions, a couple of Dominaria cards seem very good for the deck. First up is Grow from Ashes, which immediately becomes the best three-mana way to tutor up lands, since it's a Beneath the Sands (without cycling) on Turn 3 and then an Hour of Promise (without Zombies and for basics only) on Turn 4 or 5. This flexibility means it immediately slots into the deck over Beneath the Sands, which is good but not great. Our second addition is more speculative:

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Jaya Ballard is either the best card in our deck or completely unplayable, and I'm not quite sure which it is yet. On paper, Sunbird's Bounty looks like the perfect home for the planeswalker. The extra mana from the +1 can be used to cast any of our ramp spells and gets us to Brass's Bounty even earlier in the game. Meanwhile, the triple-loot ability is amazing for our deck, since one of the ways we lose most often is drawing all ramp and no action. Being able to discard three useless lands or ramp spells to dig for Sunbird's Invocation, Brass's Bounty, and our other combo pieces seems great. Finally, the ultimate should just win us the game on the spot, since we can immediately recast all of our ramp and card draw to find our Marionette Master and close out the game by saccing a bunch of Treasure tokens from our flashed-back Brass's Bounty.

Of course, this comes with the downside that Jaya Ballard is absolutly horrible at protecting herself, so in some matchups, we might end up wishing that she was a non-planeswalker card-draw spell, but the combination of a bunch of good abilities, a great ultimate, and the fact that we have a ton of instants and sorceries to take advantage of the mana she can produce at least makes her worth testing in Sunbird's Bounty.

Cultivator Huatli tokens gets the award for deck with the most changes in the Dominaria update. The biggest change is that, thanks to a bunch of powerful new token producers from Dominaria, we get to drop the Cat sub-theme all together. The main benefit of this change is that our curve becomes much more powerful and aggressive, mostly thanks to the fact that we no longer are so overloaded in the five-drop slot with Regal Caracal, aside from the namesake Cultivator of Blades. Spore Swarm is perfect for the deck, giving us another Servo Exhibition in the early game and making a massive four 1/1 Saprolings if we can kick it in the late game, while Queen's Commission replaces Pride Sovereign (which isn't nearly as exciting if we are dropping all of the other cards). We even get some free token production in our mana base thanks to Memorial of Glory!

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Meanwhile, Song of Freyalise gives us another payoff for going wide. The mana production in the early game helps us dump our hand at lightning speed, and then giving all of our tokens a permanent +1/+1 counter when it ultimates (along with one free attack, thanks to the indestructibility) is a great deal for two mana. Llanowar Elves is a must for just about any green deck that can support it, helping us ramp into our Huatli, Radiant Champion a turn early while still being a body on the battlefield to benefit from all of our "number of creatures matters" synergies. Finally, Seal Away is likely a strict upgrade to Thopter Arrest. While losing the ability to hit artifacts is somewhat annoying, Seal Away makes up for this downside by being instant speed to take down hasty threats like Glorybringer and Hazoret the Fervent.

The end result is a deck that plays much like the earlier build, with the plan being to dump as many tokens on the battlefield as possible and then win the game with a combination of Huatli, Radiant Champion and Cultivator of Blades, but with a more efficient curve and less mixed synergies. More importantly, making the upgrades isn't expensive at all, since we are adding all commons and uncommons (actually, if you can trade away the Cats, you might actually make money upgrading), and dropping the Cats now makes the deck more resilient to rotation in September.

Oh yeah, one last thing: History of Benalia is perfect for this deck—it's basically a strictly better version of Queen's Commission, and the three-drop slot is the weakest spot on our curve. Unfortunately, at this point, History of Benalia is way too expensive to be considered a budget upgrade, so I didn't include it in the deck, but I did want to make sure that I mentioned it because if you have copies, you should 100% be playing them, and if you are looking for a non-budget upgrade for Cultivator Huatli Tokens, History of Benelia is the first card you should buy. It's that good.

Wurm Revolt almost ended up in the dreaded "no updates" pile, but it does get one sweet new option in the mana base: Memorial to Glory. While cutting basic lands hurts, since we have a lot of ways to tutor basics from our library, the combination of making two chump blockers to help us stay alive until we get our powerful late-game online and a cheap revolt trigger for Aid from the Cowl when we sac Memorial to Glory makes it more that worth the cost. Otherwise, Dominaria didn't offer green or white any new, impactful finishers that do something right away on our end step (which is important with Aid from the Cowl) and relatively few was to trigger revolt (although trying to make use of Fall of the Thran and some of the other Sagas is an interesting idea), so we mostly keep the deck as is.

Favorable Pirates

I cheated a little on this one, since rather than being upgraded Favorable Pirates, it's the Favorable Djinn deck I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to the lack of Pirates in Dominaria, there really isn't much to upgrade in Favorable Pirates proper (I'd probably cut Never // Return and an Unsummon for a couple of Cast Down and call it a day). However, if you already have a bunch of random fliers and Favorable Winds, keep the Mono-Blue Djinn deck in mind. We'll probably play it for Budget Magic eventually, and the couple of times I've seen Tempest Djinn on the table in Dominaria Standard, it has been extremely scary if not removed immediately.

Temur Miracle Grow (UR Wizards)

This isn't as much of an upgrade as an entirely new deck, but if you liked the Temur Miracle Grow / UR Prowess play style, the way to go in Dominaria Standard is probably UR Wizard Prowess. While you can use a handful of the cards from Temur Miracle Grow / UR Prowess (mostly Opt, Shock, and some lands), the good news is that upgrading to UR Wizard Prowess is actually super cheap, since the non-land main-deck cards cost about $12 altogether, and if you have the original Miracle Grow deck, you should already have Spirebluff Canal (which is about 1/3 of the cost of the deck). If need be, you can leave out somewhat expensive sideboard options Goblin Chainwhirl and Dire Fleet Daredevil. While both cards are strong, they aren't essential to the deck's success.

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As for the traditional Temur Miracle Grow / UR Prowess shell, thanks to Wizard's Retort and Wizard's Lighting, combined with the fact that most of the best prowess creatures are Wizards anyway, I expect to find that the non-Wizards build of the deck is essentially a strictly worse version of UR Wizard Prowess. If you're hoping to see how the deck plays, don't worry—it's near the top of my list for a future Budget Magic or stream, so a video will be coming before too long! In the meantime, if you're a Temur Miracle Grow / UR Prowess player, pick up the pieces of UR Wizards Prowess, give it a try, and let me know how it turns out!

No Changes

The following four Budget Magic lists haven't been updated because there are no major additions from Dominaria. While it will still be a good idea to touch up the sideboard in a couple of weeks after we see what the Dominaria Standard metagame looks like, for the most part, these decks are built around Ixalan tribes or mechanics that don't have any real support from Dominaria, which means there really isn't much we can do other than to just keep playing them as is. Of course, if you have some sweet update ideas that I might have missed, make sure to let me know in the comments!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Do you have some other ideas for updates or changes to our Budget Magic decks based on Dominaria? Did I miss something potentially sweet and powerful? Let me know in the comments! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.

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